As this Midwesterner knows, we are no longer in Kansas anymore. Dorothy, and all the rest of us traditionalists in the hinterlands disdained by our coastal elite, are not even in the Oz of cherished memory. We stand barefoot upon a muddy path. The yellow bricks were long ago gifted to Israel and the ruby red slippers were last seen on the feet of a former male Olympian who is no longer the impressive decathlete of memory since he traded in his javelin and shot puts (both of them) for the adoration of the degenerate coastal elites.
As we turn to look behind us, Auntie Em’s crashed house is already being dismantled by a crew of quick Munchkins without immigration papers. We all know the flying monkeys avoid work because the Wicked Witch makes sure they get their welfare checks every month. We start forward on the muddy path.
There is no scarecrow to encounter these days. Farm subsidies and illegal Munchkins that keep Oz’s agri-giants well compensated saw to that. The Tin Man, who had no heart of his own despite being the heart of Midwestern Oz, has been shipped to China as scrap. He was too rusted and neglected to remain. The fact that a Swedish teenage girl, with an expression worse than the Wicked Witch herself, stole his oil can did not help matters. What of the lion? The lion is in Oz, but his crazy Boomer cat lady mother won’t let her fur baby (formerly known as a lion) out to play. But, at least we have Toto. Wait! Where is Toto? Surely that cannot be his skeleton behind Oz’s new ethnic restaurant? The restaurant that is so often frequented by the scholars-in-residence at the Oz Enterprise Institute. The very same scholars who have replaced God and patriotism with Trotsky and imperialism.
A cold wind is blowing through Oz, but we don’t have to worry about the Wicked Witch flying in anytime soon. We cannot even get our brooms to fly these days. (Thanks Boeing.) It appears we are all alone on this muddy and sinking path leading us further into this new and strange Oz.
L. Frank Baum’s genuine Land of Oz is well remembered by millions across the world on every continent and in every generation. But, while the story of Dorothy, Toto, and the captivating cast of characters is remembered for its creative fiction, suspenseful horror, and brilliant fantasy landscapes, it is not often remembered as the allegory to the 1873 silver demonetization that motivated its creation in the first place. The tornado was the economic upheaval that caused many in the non-coastal, agricultural hinterlands of America to lose everything they held dear. It would take Midwestern Christian populist, and one of the greatest orators to ever speak for Americans, William Jennings Bryan to articulately voice the fear and destruction felt throughout the heartlands.
Our ancestors in the Midwest and Dixie were indeed being crucified upon a cross of gold. Bryan would carry the Democratic banner proudly in 1896, 1900, and 1908. In the first two elections, he was defeated by the uncompromising protectionist and imperialist William McKinley, whose campaign and administration sat firmly upon a foundation of solid gold. Bryan’s last serious defense of populism came in 1908. One of my kinfolk, who originated from the same forefathers as I in the Old Dominion, Senator John W. Kern of Indiana, had the honor of sharing the 1908 Democratic presidential ticket with the great William Jennings Bryan. But, alas, they were no match for William Howard Taft and his girth, both political and physical. It would take an Oyster Bay Bull Moose and a Princeton professor most abstruse to stop Taft in his extremely deep and wide tracks in 1912.
The bespectacled scholar Woodrow Wilson, who was of Virginia Presbyterian stock, and governor of New Jersey would claim the White House in 1912. Bryan would later serve as the Princeton professor’s Secretary of State. It does sadden this Hoosier, who has an affinity for the glorious brown liquid produced by our neighbors in the glorious Blue Grass Commonwealth south of the Ohio River, that Bryan’s most notable achievement was banning alcohol in the Department of State. Bryan was no longer a man of the times and found himself replaced in Wilson’s cabinet as the clouds of war, which had already blanketed Europe, approached the shores of America quickly and ominously.
As it would so happen, the classical Land of Oz was no longer in accord with the times either. World war, women’s suffrage, progressive income taxes, a popularly-elected Senate, the Federal Reserve system, federal prohibition of alcohol, and a League of Nations were being more quickly and destructively hurled at Americans than any bullets were hurled from machine guns towards soldiers in the trenches of Europe.
As most of us remember, in the classical Land of Oz, a mere mortal man, a trickster, was behind the curtain Dorothy pulled back upon reaching her destination at the end of the Yellow Brick Road. In the early stage productions showcasing Baum’s classical Land of Oz, the man behind the curtain, the mere mortal man who played a wizard with the aid of machinery and heavy curtain, was sometimes portrayed as one of the Eastern elites Bryan railed against. Gold-worshipping Yankees such as Grover Cleveland, JP Morgan, and William McKinley were a few men who had the dubious honor of being portrayed as the smoke and mirrors confidence man cowering behind a curtain in a large castle far away from the problems of Oz. But, as should be apparent to any American with sense, we are no longer in the classical and beloved Land of Oz. We have reached the end of the muddy and sunken path in this Ersatz Oz.
The muddy road of Ersatz Oz has taken us from 1912 to 2020. Why is this Oz ersatz? Ersatz goods are goods of cheap and inferior quality in comparison to high-quality, genuine goods. Everything about our current journey for the past century has been characterized by cheap and inferior quality. Our family values, our churches, our politics, our economy, our foreign policy, and our education system are all of inferior quality to those our ancestors sacrificed so much to build. Sacrifice is not cherished, nor even remembered, in Ersatz Oz. No, false victimhood provided through odious revisionist history is the supreme virtue that all those lost and wandering citizens of Ersatz Oz, entranced by our modern wizards, strive to achieve. There is no higher calling than that of victim today.
What wizards await us behind the curtain of Ersatz Oz? Spoiler Alert: There is no curtain in this cheap and inferior Oz. The rotating rogues gallery of wizards are clearly visible inside the castle that is modern America.
The only curtains that exist are the eyelids of the ignorant, brainwashed, degenerate and downtrodden masses who cannot, or will not, open their eyes and see what wizards are destroying the fabric of civilized life. Jared Kushner, Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, and Jeff Bezos are but a few of the many wizards manipulating and destroying everything good that remains. When my Yankee ancestors “slithered off of the Mayflower,” in the words of a dear friend and fellow writer, this current morally repugnant and braindead culture is not what they had in mind. When my Dixie ancestors followed Alexander Spotswood over the Blue Ridge mountains to the scenic and serene Shenandoah Valley and fought under General Ewell to prevent destruction of that same majestic valley, they could have never imagined their hard toil would benefit a group of rootless, cosmopolitan bureaucrats from the current imperial capital who advocate wealth confiscation, infanticide, and disarming of the Old Dominion’s citizenry among many other morally reprehensible things. Our forefathers sacrificed too much for us to blindly continue to follow the wizards under whose spells our heritage, culture, and values are being destroyed. Remember, the wizards do not even respect us enough to even attempt to hide their contempt and plans of destruction behind a curtain.
There is no place like home. There is no place like home. There is no place like home.
-By Hoosier Daddy
O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.
You forget from the original book, the Emerald City was solid illusion- – everyone wore the green tinted goggles, and when going through without them, the city was quite drab.
They have been putting the goggles of government indoctrination on everyone for decades, even now only a few ever dare take just the occasional peek past that lens.
“I do not prize the word “cheap.” It is not a badge of honor. It is a symbol of despair. Cheap prices make for cheap goods; cheap goods make for cheap men; and cheap men make for a cheap country.”
Wm McKinley
For a man who eschewed cheap men, he certainly paved the way for many to grace our shores with imperial adventures in Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico.
Interesting that you chose this time frame, for in 1913 we began our descent into hell when the Federal Reserve Bank became our landlord. From there we became a tool for them which took down the Czar, then Germany in 2 world wars, and numerous small nations posing resistance to the money managers. And finally today, in poetic justice, we unwittingly are one of their final victims, serving both as tax cattle and life support as they choke us to death with the end of white christianity. That has been their ultimate goal these last 100 yrs, white against white, sucking the life blood out of us, diluting our race and brainwashing our youth while they reap the profits of endless wars that we supply the money and manpower for. The tribe that shall not be named.
AMEN. But some such as E Michael Jones are starting to name them to an ever expanding audience.
However I fear it is too little and much too late, especially with so many churches teaching ‘Christian Zionism’.
William Randolph Hearst was a tranny? That gives an entirely new meaning to Rosebud.
Above comment about Hearst was meant for comments that seem to have been deleted. Please disregard
Stories told in metaphors or parables are always entertaining- excellent writing!
Thank you sir!
The inflation debasement hits everything. Our ancestors, even the poorest, wore natural fibers: linen, cotton, and wool. Now folks go about wearing uncomfortable, hot, plastic constructions. Folks could affordably buy shoes worth resoling. Now, plastic and glue abominations that reliably fall apart when the glue reaches end of life. And the there’s the debasement of food, from cow that don’t eat grass all the way down to farmers growing corn and soy crops that aren’t edible without a substantial set of industrial processes outside the farm.
The cross of gold would have been a kinder solution than what actually happened.
When the soil is lost everything else becomes meaningless. Clothes, shoes, machinery, and other items that meet an essential level of good and durable quality, while not impoverishing their buyers, are essential, but if they have no land remaining on which to utilize those goods, all is lost. The Cross of Gold tore many great rural Americans from soil their forefathers gave blood, sweat, and tears to obtain and hold in trust for future generations. The Cross of Gold gave a significant boost to urbanization, which allowed certain foreign ideas, mostly from the Pale of Settlement, begin to take a deathly hold upon the common man.
Hmmm? I wonder what Kushner, Zuckerberg , and Soros have in common.
https://youtu.be/_iVdy0s8ARE